Bilingual English / Estonian edition

Doris Kareva is one of Estonia's leading poets, and Shape of Time is her eleventh book of poetry and her first full collection to be published in the UK.

The poet suggests that it is composed like a piece of music in three 'movements'. The first, After the World, presents as its central theme a post-apocalyptic picture of despair; the second, Deo et Die, develops, by drawing on the beauty of nature and language, a measured message of hope; and the third, Shape of Time, through a process of re-evaluation and reconstruction, consolidates a new order. A short fourth part, Zero Point Reflection, reflects by way of a finale on what has gone before from a slightly different perspective, serving to underline the ambiguities and uncertainties of the poet's journey through time.

Doris Kareva observes the anguish of existence and experience in a style that is pared-back, bone-clean, needle-sharp. Her work has indeed the notation of the music of inwardness, of its despairs and its mediating flashes of illumination. And thus her poetry has its being in a time and place where past, present and future exist simultaneously.

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Quotes and Reviews

In her Translator's Preface, Tiina Aleman explains how closely she and Doris Kareva worked on the poems in this volume. Kareva herself is a well-regarded translator who has translated widely from English into Estonian, so I assume these versions achieve a high level of fidelity to the originals. ...more »

Edmund Prestwich, Manchester Review

... Doris Kareva's Shape of Time, translated from Estonian, seems somewhat bloodless and abstracted. Kareva trained as a philologist, and these sequences of short untitled poems often explore ideas about language: The blood of language roars in a verb she writes, and see / language burst, proud and frenzied, / ancient, awful, and fresh, / into unbelievable blossoms. ...more »

Elizabeth Burns, Writing the Loved World, Stride Magazine 2010

Many translated collections, even where there is dual text, are unsatisfactory. The English version not only does not have the original word music and subtle associations, but frequently has very little music and is more like prose and can seem banal or oddly phrased. ...more »

Stella Stocker, Weyfarers 108, 2010

What to make of a collection that begins The dog with a third eye sees the shape of time / and is startled? Some years ago I reviewed another Arc collection, by the Slovenian poet Tomaz Salamun. ...more »

Ross Cogan, Acumen 68, September 2010

Of the two Estonians here, Doris Kareva is the senior figure with fourteen volumes of poetry and one of essays published over the last three decades finding a readership in many countries. ...more »

Ian Revie, The Warwick Review Vol.V No.1 March 2011

Shape of Time is translated from the original Estonian by Tiina Aleman, who gives an interesting and helpful Preface; there is also an Introduction by the distinguished Penelope Shuttle, so you are not alone in approaching this work. ...more »